On Documentary Practice
Convenor: David Lloyd, Deputy Director, Research, Queensland College of ArtBy the middle of the 20th century, theorists began to acknowledge the confluence of documentary practice with some qualitative research methodologies. Becker suggested that sociologists should learn photography 'because photographers [documentists] have studied many of the same things which sociologists routinely study' (Becker, 1974). By the time of, and subsequent to Becker?s writing, documentary practice had produced seminal works that, today, are acknowledged as rigorous, intelligent and discovery based practices.
Reproducing ourselves through stories, whatever the medium, Aristotle argued '...is implanted within and separates us from animals' (Butcher 1902). Through imitation we learn our 'earliest lessons and derive, universally, pleasure? (Poetics Section 1 part iv). The greater the versimilitude the more immense the learning and the pleasure derived 'not only to philosophers but to men in general: whose capacity, however, of learning is more limited' (Poetics Section 1 Part iv). Bathes argued the tautological qualities of the photograph, Sontag that 'photography is acquisition?a possession which give photographs some of the character of unique objects' and 2400 years ago Aristotle observed that 'we delight to contemplate [stories] when produced with minute fidelity' (Aristotle Poetics).
The importance of the photo document is, therefore, that the common person, like the philosopher, delights in knowing.